The Doomsday Clock is an internationally recognized design that conveys how close we are to destroying our civilization with dangerous technologies of our own making. First and foremost among these are nuclear weapons, but the dangers include climate-changing technologies, emerging... Read More

Today, more than 25 years after the end of the Cold War, the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board have looked closely at the world situation and found it so threatening that the hands of the Doomsday Clock must once again be set at three minutes to midnight.

The first installment of a five-part series exploring the diplomacy and intelligence efforts that led Libya and its quixotic leader, Muammar al-Qaddafi, to relinquish that country's weapons of mass destruction

The author argues that disarmament is a desirable goal if it contributes to security, but that no reasonable arms control expert would argue for total disarmament if the outcome would be reduced security.

Moving past the Ukraine crisis will require a mindset rare among national leaders. It is a mindset capable of seeing connections, patterns, and dynamic systems, one with a sightline extending into the future beyond the next political election, and into the past as seen by others who experienced it.

Since 2000, Russian military doctrine has included the concept of “de-escalation”—the idea that, if Russia were faced with a large-scale conventional attack, it might respond with a limited nuclear strike aimed at forcing an opponent to retreat. Here's why.

For decades before it was selected for closure, the Treasure Island Naval Station in San Francisco Bay overhauled military ships and housed nuclear war academies that used radium, plutonium, and cesium 137 in their training courses. The Navy knew for years that those materials were not always in safe hands. But it did not acknowledge that history publicly, and as a result, workers preparing for civilian redevelopment may have inadvertently spread radioactive material around the island, The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) has found in a yearlong investigation co-published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

With increasing reports of cyber attacks on US banks, oil facilities, power plants, and even military systems, it comes as good news that the Obama administration is crafting policy on cybersecurity. In Tuesday's State of the Union address, the President said that "America must … face the rapidly growing threat from cyber attacks," and urged Congress to pass legislation that would help it do so.